Purity
by Maddeline Bonnefoy-Kirkland
Summary: - Erin definition of purity had changed throughout her life, often with disastrous outcomes. - In the same universe as irukandji's Glass Jar; warnings inside.


**Another one shot related to another amazing author's series~ This one takes place in the same universe as ****irukandj's _Glass Jar_, which I suggest reading~ Actually, I suggest reading _all_ of her works, but be careful if you have certain triggers.**

**WARNING(S): Mentions of restrictive eating, child abuse, trans and homophobia (for lack of a better term), and parental abandonment.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot and my OC, Erin Kirkland.**

**KEY:**

**She/Erin = Rupublic of Ireland**

**Allistor = Scotland**

**Dylan = Wales**

**Colin = Northern Ireland**

**Arthur = England**

* * *

Until she was sixteen, she had thought that she understood purity. She had thought it meant being a good Catholic girl, attending Mass and saying all her prayers and going to Confession. It had meant being chaste until she found the person she wanted to share her life with. It meant obeying all the Commandments to the letter, it meant reading the Bible cover to cover and doing her best to understand it. It meant having a relationship like her parents', one that would never break, no matter what. It meant having a relationship that was loyal and strong and stable.

As she had gotten older, this perception of purity had changed. She had believed all of that until she was eleven which was when she had met the other girls in her confirmation classes. They had taught her differently. Being young, and with no-one to really tell her otherwise, the eldest child of the Kirkland family had willingly listened. Those girls had looked at her oddly, never liked her wild red curls, her bright green eyes, or her naturally pale, clear, and freckled skin. They had never liked how she could play the violin so well, or how she could speak her mother tongue of Irish just as fluently as she could speak English. They laughed at her behind their hands for her Irish accent and 'outdated' clothes.

She had only realized how much they alternately hated and were jealous of her two years later, when she was thirteen. That was when her definition of purity changed again. By this time, she had three little brothers; Allistor was nine, Dylan was five, and little Colin was one. Responsibilities, expectations, and standards were placed on her shoulders. Perfection was demanded and expected, and anything less was punished by beatings that left her bruised and scarred. Eventually, she began to see purity as letting out all of the pain, making herself cry in the only way she knew how – tears of red blood like rubies against the snowy skin of her forearms.

Fourteen brought the onset of two things. One was the end of her years in middle school, and the other was another shift in her definition of purity. Her growth spurts had begun, and with them, her weight had increased to adjust to her longer limbs. Her parents were furious; her Irish dance teacher decided that she wasn't working hard enough; her classmates sniggered behind their hands, just like the girls had three years ago. Eventually, one of the girls from her confirmation classes those three long years ago took pity on her, and told her exactly how she could get better. The first day of summer was the first day she went a day without eating, and the first day she started to feel a little bit better about herself.

That sense of control only lasted so long, before it wasn't enough anymore.

The restricting, exercising, hiding and lying should have taken its toll on her more quickly than it did, but she was resilient, and this wasn't the only thing she was hiding. She had known two things since she was little, though one more clearly than the other. Seven, just before Dylan was born, was when she had realized that she wasn't comfortable being seen as a girl. Not understanding what she was feeling, she had asked the neighbor boys for some of their stuff, and she had hacked off her hair with kitchen scissors. The scars from where she had nicked her neck were nothing compared to the beating she received, when her parents discovered what she had done. Later, when puberty finally hit for her, she had discovered that while she loved people for people, she was more often attracted to girls than boys. By then she was well used to hiding, lying, and putting on a fake smile.

When she was sixteen, her perceptions of true purity were changed irrevocably and forever. An affair that her mother had been having had come to light, but her mother had assured her father that she wasn't carrying an illegitimate child. When the baby was born, he changed everything. He had blonde hair the color of sunshine, and the same emerald eyes that all their siblings had. Their parents hated him from the beginning, but she was enamored with the child as soon as she laid eyes on him. As time passed, it became clear that their parents wanted nothing to do with him, and that their brothers didn't really care much one way or the other. The little one was two months old when she named him Arthur.

She was seventeen, and Arthur was one, when she realized that her vices couldn't continue. Her cutting had gotten worse over the years, and she had started drinking when she was fifteen, but she was soon violently shown that these things had to stop. Arthur had been crying, begging for her to hold him, to love him, in the only way that he knew how; she had left him to cry so she could finish her bottle of whiskey and make just a few more cuts. Picking him up with hastily bandaged arms, and her breath smelling like liquor, the babe had only cried harder. It had sobered her up quickly, when she had realized that she was causing her little one pain.

Cold turkey was the hardest thing she had experienced up until that point. Coupled with how much her parents were still expecting of her, the rapidly downward spiraling of her eating disorder was the only thing that she knew how to cope with. However, she kept telling herself that it was fine, that she was fine, that everything would be okay. She was eighteen when she realized just how wrong she was. On top of everything else, it felt like a personal failure that Arthur was something of a late bloomer; he was intelligent, there was no doubt about that, but he hadn't yet spoken his first words.

Arthur had been crying, needing to be consoled, when it had happened. Allistor had begun to become suspicious, but she had never noticed it, so she hadn't thought to hide how much she wasn't eating any more than she usually hid anything. That didn't mean that she had eaten anything; she couldn't remember when she had last really eaten. Standing at the top of the stairs was, in hindsight, not the smartest thing, but she had been so focused on her little one, had she had never noticed the vertigo and dizziness curling up her spine ad in front of her eyes. She had reached out a hand to gently wipe away Arthur's tears, to pull him close to her, to tell him that everything was alright – but then she was falling, the pain never registering through the fog that had swallowed her mind.

The last thing she remembered, upon hitting the bottom step, was Arthur shrieking, "MAMA!"

Waking up in the hospital was a very painful reality check for her. Seeing Allistor asleep in the chair beside her bed was even worse. But the worst of all, was seeing Arthur curled up against her side, cheeks red and puffy from crying, little hands fisted in her blanket and hospital gown. Then she saw the tear tracks on her younger brother's cheeks, and she nearly began crying herself. Shaking her head, she realized that she had no right to cry. She had put those she loved through all of this – Allistor was her best friend, and Arthur was the son she was sure she would never have – and she owed it to them to make it right. Perhaps, she thought cynically, she could at least do this thing right.

She had never thought she would spend more than a decade spinning between recovery and relapse, before she finally realized there was no way out. Her most major relapse was when she was thirty-two, just before Arthur's sixteenth birthday. This time, she wasn't nearly as lucky as the first time – if crashing into an oncoming car could be compared with falling down a very long staircase. No, she had been lucky that first time because she hadn't woken up all alone. That was the moment she had cried, completely breaking down and sobbing in the way she hadn't since she had first been beaten by her parents when she was six and she punched a boy for calling her awful names. And yet, hat experience was what finally made her realize what she had been missing all along.

True purity was the love between herself and her family, and she had to fight hard to keep it.


End file.
